Dark Blotters
by Fuzzy Necromancer
Summary: A young foal wants to win Princess Luna's Scariest Story Contest, but first he needs to beg, cajole, and blackmail more prominent ponies for feedback. Will Sweetie Belle help him perfect his art? Will Applejack's honesty make him cry? Contains meta.
1. Chapter 1

Crimson Blot struck a match in the darkness. He lit the five candles around him just before it burned up. He checked that the ivory cup was half-full, the thick red contents almost black in the faint light. Everything had to be _perfect_.

Tonight he would have to do terrible things. Tonight he would explore all things dark and unspeakable. Tonight he would just have to turn off those things that made him a unicorn instead of a mindless, ravening beast.

"Awake the nightmare," he said, channeling energy into his horn. "Awake the nightmare." Cold air rushed around the room. The candles guttered. The shining black raven feather rose into the air.

"Awake the nightmare!" Crimson Blot snarled, his voice taking on an echoing tone, as if somebody much older and large was mimicking his words.

The raven feather dipped into the inkpot. Crimson Blot drank deep from the cup of cranberry juice and, feeling suitably inspired, began to write his tale of violence and depravity.

_Sweetstuff shivered against the cold stormy wind. She didn't know why, but something about Derpy Hooves's smile unnerved her. _

"_Come in, my friend. You're just in time for my muffin party. I think you can help me make the next batch, and I'm really really really hungry." Derpy Hooves laughed cruelly._

"_I have a bad feeling about this, " Sweetstuff said as she walked in out of the cold wet rain…_


	2. Chapter 2

"Are you sure it's good?" Crimson Blot said, leaning over Snips's shoulder as he read.

Snails raised his long neck from the scroll and blinked. His eyes screwed up, his tongue stuck out, and his cute little freckles glowed in the light of the waning afternoon. Crimson Blot sighed.

"Uh, what's a viskar?" Snails drawled.

Crimson Blot whipped his tail. Snails could be so adorable, why did he have to spoil the effect by opening his mouth? He leaned over and checked the passage under the slender-necked orange unicorn's hoove.

"That's viscera, Snails. It means the snakey purple bits inside you," Crimson Blot said, barely repressing the smugness in his voice.

"This is the coolest thing ever!" Snips squealed.

Crimson Blot squirmed in his seat and raised his glance to the green-and-white awning as if seeking a third opinion. He'd cranked out most of this after midnight, when the panic of the coming deadline kept him out of bed and he'd run out of minor chores to take care of. Sure, there were other times when Crimson Blot had scribbled out a story in the thrall of Luna's artistry, keeping himself awake with sugar cubes and willpower, but he had felt some kind of inner fire then that hadn't been present in this story. He didn't spend weeks playing around with the idea in his head, tasting it, feeling it inch into life.

"This is the right table, yes?" Berry Shine asked. "One hot chocolate with extra cream, one tea with milk and buckwheat honey, and one decaf?"

"Tea please, Miss Berry Shine," Snips said, his voice cracking as he looked up at the purple-pink unicorn with his rounded green face.

"I don't know why you drink that stuff," Snails said, grabbing his hot chocolate. He blew on it so hard that some of the whipped cream fell off.

"Pip says it's awesome," Snips said, without rancor. "And you can't put honey in hot chocolate."

"Why not?" Snails said, squeezing a few honey packets into his cup. He slurped up half its contents and then panted to cool off his tongue. Whipped cream, chocolate foam, and sticky honey covered his face like a Nightmare Night mask. Crimson Blot repressed the urge to lick them off. _Stupid Snails!_

Snips frowned, shrugged, and sipped his tea.

Blot cleared his throat and raised a hoof. "I'm having the _coffee_, please. Black and unsweetened." He levitated the cup off the tray, only spilling a little as he raised it to his lips. Crimson Blot held back a scream as the scalding fluid splashed his face.

Berry Shine rolled her eyes. "Just as you ordered, _sir_. Now that's twelve bits for the lot."

Snips almost choked on his tea. "Four bits for a cuppa?"

Crimson Blot reached into his pack. "It's cool guys, I've got it covered." He tossed out the thirteen coins onto the table. "Keep the change, little lady." He narrowed his eyes and waved a magnanimous hoof.

Berry Shine scooped up the change and walked away, muttering something about alimony.

"So, you both like my story? Like, a lot?" Crimson Blot said, all the pretended coolness evaporating from his voice.

The two unicorns nodded vigorously.

Crimson Blot sipped his coffee, struggling not to spit out the horrible black muck or let his disgust show on his face. Real writers had to drink coffee and meet in cafes to discuss great literature. "What do you like about it?"

A lengthy silence followed. Snips almost panicked. Snails might have been having an attack of the trots.

"There's lots of blood," Snails said, with the air of one confessing a secret love. "And dark scary stuff. And Derpy Hooves is a can-apple. Those are so cool."

"I think it's really scary when Sweetstuff walks in, and, like, it's so sad, because she's all pretty and stuff, and I don't want bad things to happen to a cute mare." Snips murmured. "And, like, Derpy killed everypony, and she got away with it." He shuddered. "She's so…strong."

Crimson Blot nodded slowly. He wasn't sure if Derpy could really get away with killing everypony in the town, but she needed to kill everyone. It wasn't really scary unless everyone died and the villain won. That made it deep and serious. Really, he'd gotten bored writing all those messy descriptions of gore. He'd taken long breaks to look up synonyms for "cut" and "bite" in the thesaurus, and he'd had to go to the dictionary for some fancier words, and then he'd had to look up Sparkle Scrub's Guide to Equine Anatomy. He'd tried to mix things up, have Derpy use different weapons and inventive forms of torture, but it kept getting dull. Still, it had to be more fun to read than to write. Snips and Snails thought it was great.

Snails was talking again, unfortunately. Crimson Blot shook his head. "Sorry, what was that?"

"I said, do you wanna join our Around Six O Clock fanclub? Our first meeting is tonight!"

"Yeah, we're going to stay up for the midnight performance of the play-version of the second book, Waning Gibbous! We've got our 'vampire blood' strawberry-pomegranite smoothies, and purity rings, and it's gonna be awesome!" Snips squealed. "Roberta Patrottson is going to autograph copies of the book for just twenty bits each!"

Crimson Blot frowned. "Is that the book about vampires in love or something?"

"It's only the awesomest love story ever!" Snails shouted, spraying whipped cream and chocolate flecks on Crimson's face. "It's like, there's this vampire mare, who's a sparkly-white mysterious unicorn, and she wants to eat this ordinary clumsy earth pony named Billy, but she doesn't want to eat him, because she's in love with him!

"He's got all these lame people trying to make friends with him, but he just cares about this mysterious mare!" Snips chimed in. "And he's awkward and normal, but, like, really special, like me!" He sniffed and wiped away a tear. "She watches him sleep, and breaks into his house, and stops him from seeing other people because he cares about her."

"It's sooo romantic!" Snails sobbed, blowing his nose on the tablecloth. He shouldn't have looked graceful when he did this, but he did.

"What does this have to do with…purity rings?" Crimson Blot said, feeling certain he wouldn't like the answer. Why hadn't they covered winking out yet in magic class? The ability to disappear into thin air seemed very important when Blot saw the gleam of intensity in Snips's and Snails's eyes.

"It's the ultimate promise!" Snails bellowed.

"Just like Billy and Edwarda!" Snips said. "Billy would rather die at the hands of his lover than give up his purity!"

"No smootching until marriage!" the both shouted together.

Crushing disappointment and bone-chilling fear warred inside Crimson Blot. Fear won out.

"Um, well, sorry guys, but I _really_ need to work _extra hard_ to get this story ready for Luna's Scariest Story Contest. Um, if you, like, er, had to change one thing about it, what would it be?" Crimson Blot said. He set down his coffee, stood up, and backed away.

"More gore and blood and gore!" Snails said.

"Less long talky bits and Derpy thinking," Snips said.

"Right. Thanks. Bye!" Crimson Blot said. He took one look at the purity rings on their right hooves and ran as if a pack of Ursa Majors were after him.


	3. Chapter 3

"So, um, what do you think of it?" Crimson Blot said, scraping the carpet with his hooves. Dewey Decimal was strong, wise, and relentless, all that an earth pony should and could be. His stubborn logic and rustic charms made him an ideal friend, and sometimes Crimson Blot wondered if Dewey could be his one true love. At all the slumber parties they'd had, he could just imagine leaning close to kiss those tangerine lips…

"First tell me the title, authorship, publishing company, city of publication, and what it is about so I can find the right Library of Canterlot subject headings," Dewey Decimal said, striding past him towards the opened scroll. His long golden tail brushed Crimson Blot's face with an tantalizing yet contemptuous gesture.

Crimson Blot struggled to divert enough blood for his brain to process. "Bluh?" His friend Dewey might be the soundest critic he had ever encountered, and the perfect pony to cut through the horse-apples to the truth of a matter, and he knew everything about money and politics, but he could be rather…singleminded .

"You heard me. I need to know all of this before I can judge your story." Dewey snorted with impatience, his bright orange face darkening to a brick color, eyes crossing in consternation behind his horn-rimmed glasses. Dewey Decimal had written a lot of letters to Princess Celestia complaining about Twilight Sparkle's inadequacies as a librarian: she could never find anything, she relied on assistants too much, she was more interested in reading books herself than lending them, she didn't know every single book in her library like he did, she was a horrible librarian and a certain unnamed orange-colored earth pony was much more deserving of the post, etc. As far as Crimson Blot knew, Princess Celestia had never answered Dewey Decimal's letters. That was probably for the best.

Crimson couldn't imagine complaining to Princess Celestia about one of the Wielders of Harmony. He sighed. Dewey was so much more brave and daring than he was. It was part of his rugged earth-pony charms.

Crimson Blot scraped his hooves across the carpet while Dewey Decimal paced around him, pausing here and there to rearrange his book shelves or tidy up some paper. So many ponyville natives talked with the Wielders as if they were just ordinary ponies, and not living avatars of the great virtues. They had redeemed Nightmare Moon, purified her to become the great princess Luna. They had destroyed the power of Discord, god of chaos and entropy, lord of suffering and insanity. Blot shuddered. He remembered the year-long minutes of utter chaos. On that day, or rather series of days and night, he had been eating lunch with Dewey Decimal. The chocolate milk had smelled like vanilla, and they'd fought of mosquitoes the size of falcons. When the table caught fire, only it burned with ice, he'd tried to put it out with the chocolate milk, but that had just made it explode into flames.

The horrifying moment had been ended by the wielders, fighters of evil gods. These living saints, these superheroines, these fighters of monsters, acted as if they were regular ponies, and a lot of Ponyville natives just treated them as if they were flesh and blood. He shook his head. They were like living gods, impossible to approach, aside from the outgoing Wielder of Laughter.

"Um, well, the authorship is me, Crimson Blot, the title is 'Muffins', it's about can-apple-izzum, murder, evil, um, insanity, Derpy Hooves, and muffins." As for city of publication and publishing company, um, I don't know. It hasn't been published yet."  
>Dewey snorted. "That's no excuse. Give me an estimate at least."<p>

Crimson Blot hesitated and stared out the window. The street was filled with colorful earth ponies, relieved here and there by a Pegasus or unicorn Apple-sellers hawked their wares, sky-cleaners shifted clouds, and the daily mundanities continued. Aside from the vast shape sliding in between shadows, nothing was of any interest. He sighed. It was just his luck he lived in a boring little town, devoid of serial killers, can-apples, and incestuous murderers. Where could he find inspiration?

"So, um, how do you feel about the actual story?" Crimson Blot asked his friend.

Dewey Decimal swished his tail. "It's on my reading list," he said, defensively.

Blot lowered his head. Dewey had a reading list several scrolls of parchment long. "Alright then. I'm going to head over to sugarcube corner."


	4. Chapter 4

Crimson Blot surreptitiously brushed his violet mane and straightened his mauve bowtie. He thought the tie did a good job of setting off his lilac eyes and indigo skin. The coat-tails on his white dress-shirt helped draw attention to his cutie mark, a black quill with a drop of blood leaking from it's tip. His smile wavered a little as he regarded his posterior decoration. He had a unique gift for weaving tales of terror and bringing nightmares to life. He had to win Nightmare -that is, Princess Luna's, spooky story contest. Otherwise, what did was he worth as a pony?

But that didn't matter, because of course he was going to win. Even the bravest siege engine of joy in Equestria couldn't giggle at _this_ ghostie. He cackled diabolically (or at least, he thought it was diabolical. To an outsider it sounded like he had some hay caught in his throat) at the thought of the Wielder of Laughter, reduced to shivering and tears by his ghoulish tale. Well, maybe not tears. He'd feel pretty bad if he made her _that_ upset. Still, he wanted it to be the good kind of scary, the "scary but fun" sort that everyone had last Nightmare Night. He'd nearly done ruined his costume when she showed up in full fanged Nightmare Moon mode and threatened to eat him alive. She was so dark and regal, a potent expression of the most primal and savage impulses buried under the civilized skin of everyday life. Her mane was beautiful like a clear starry night, and that powerful, commanding voice gave him chills in more ways than one. It would almost be-but no, of course, there was no way a gawky unicorn like him could compete with the smooth, continental charms of Pip. He'd resent the adorable little bucker if he didn't hold secret hopes of getting invited to one of his tea parties.

While stirring over his thoughts, two voices emerged from Sugarcube Corner. One was low, muffled, the other the familiar chatter of Pinkie Pie. If he'd been paying more attention to his surroundings, he might have heard the rougher voice snicker.

"Don't worry, he can take it, and he'll think it's awesome when he figures out. You read that story, right?"  
>"If you say so. I just hope it isn't too meanie-weeny. I mean, I don't want to make him fly off in a huff like Gilda,"<br>"Relax. He gets free food, free advice, and something that's scary but fun. Anyway, it's all at my expense if you think about it."

"Well, I guess so. And it _is _pretty funny." Pinkie Pie burst into giggles, and the second voice hushed her.

Glancing closer at the store front's glass, Crimson rubbed a bit of alfalfa from his teeth and wished he'd figured out that voice-deepening charm. Princess Luna was so far out of his league that he wasn't even able to think of a funny or evocative bit of figurative language to describe her. Heck, Pip was out of his league too. His tale sagged as he stared at his pitiful reflection. He must be the only unicorn in his class who didn't have a marefriend or a coltfriend. He sniffed. He'd go home later to drink horrible-tasting coffee and listen to records like The Best of Angry Earth Ponies Shouting. That would make him feel better.

He couldn't cry now. He'd gotten all dressed up to look his best when he appeared before the Wielder of Laughter. Well, partly for her. He re-straightened his bow tie. Maybe if he was really lucky, he'd catch a glimpse of the glorious Mrs. Cake. Just the thought of her gorgeous, full-figured marely form, her frosting-smeared smile, her-

"Is there something wrong with our windows? I thought that Sudsy did a good job of washing them, but maybe he missed a spot?"

His own reflected image was shunted aside by the element of laughter. "Hm, it seems okay from this end."

The door swung open and Pinkie Pie jumped out, showering him with confetti. "I'm super glad that you wanted to share your story with me and I made dumplings! I mean, I don't have to make cupcakes all the time."

Crimson Blot felt a desperate need to say something funny, or at the very least clever. Something that would impress her, and make her even happier, and show she hadn't made a mistake by agreeing to give her advice on his story.

"Dumplings are a food." He said.

Pinkie Pie lifted him up in a whirling hug. "There's no foaling you! Of course, you are a foal, and I don't know why everypony uses 'foal' to mean somepony being silly, but I still like silly people, I mean, I'm silly! Hot sauce?"

"Bwah?" Crimson Blot inquired, still looking at the glass. Pinkie Pie yanked him inside before he could sort out his recent memory. Maybe she'd just been behind the glass, but for a moment, it had looked like she had stepped in front of his reflected image while staying behind the unyielding surface of polished glass…


	5. Chapter 5

Giggles and raucous laughter emerged from Sugar Cube Corner.

"Are you sure this isn't too, well," Pinkie Pie squeaked.

"Sh, be quiet!"

"You hush up first,"

"RD!"

The voices went silent as Crimson Blot knocked on the door. There was the sound of scuffling hooves, pots and pans shifting.

"Hi! I'm so glad you showed up! This is totally awesome! I love meeting old friends!"

Crimson Blot blushed. He could barely believe that Pinkie Pie, the bearer of the Element of Laughter, the most popular mare in Ponyville, thought of him as an "old friend." He had met her, what, four, maybe five times? And two of those were times when he accidentally spilled ink on her face.

This was the spirit of hilarity, a protector of harmony, a living saint. She who could twist the firmament of reality around her hoof was calling him an "old friend".

Crimson Blot bowed down before her. "Thank you, Pinkamena Dianne Pie, Bearer of the Element of Laughter, for welcoming me into your house."

"Of course I'm going to welcome you in. You gave me a story to read! And, well, I like reading things, not as much as Twilight, but still, it's fun. And sometimes Gummy reads stories to me while I'm working on baking, which is really nice of him, it's like having a talking book! I wonder if Twilight has any talking books…"

Pinkie Pie bounded effortlessly past the gleaming displays of prismatic confectionaries. Crimson turned over the phrase "prismatic confectionaries" and found it good. "Colorful baked goods" or "pretty sweets" failed to take in the sheer scope of colors designed to arrest the eye. Sugarcube Corner might sell simple pound cakes and hot cross buns, but no such listless items would find a place on the front counter. Everything there shed a radiance you could taste with your eyes, the sharp yellows on a citrus tart edging almost beyond the visible spectrum into the realm of tanginess made visible—

Crimson noticed he was lagging behind Pinkie Pie. He pumped his little unicorn legs hard to catch up.

"Have a seat!" Pinkie Pie said, shoving a chair beneath him. "Only please try to give it back when you're done using it, otherwise we'll run out of seats. Now eat up before it gets cold!"

The modest table displayed an array of multicolored dumplings, from beet root red and cornbread yellow to spinach green and blackberry purple. There was also a candy dish and a few steaming pot pies. Because Pinkie Pie was Pinkie Pie, the pot pies had frosting on them and the dumplings had been rolled in confectioner's sugar. She had also provided several bowls of caramel and hot sauce for dipping. At the center of the table was a silver dish cover.

Crimson bit into one of the dumplings. The filling had rainbow streaks, with thick blueberry current, lemon yellow, and strawberry-pink. The fruit flavors were only notes in a thicker, chewier filling he couldn't' quite identify. "Is Mrs Cake here?" he said, looking around and wiping a bit of juice from his bowtie.

"Ohk nofe," Pinkie said, with three dumplings in her mouth. She swallowed. "She and Mr. Cake went off to Manehatten to celebrate their tenth anniversary.' She sighed. "They go just like glazed donuts and hot sauce."

"Yeah," Crimson mumbled. A thought struck him. "Shouldn't you be taking care of customers?"

"Oh don't worry about your pretty little head about that," Pinkie Pie said, waving a hoof airily. "Bon Bon's come in part time to share the load. I can always make room for a friend." She punctuated the statement by gulping down one of the pot pies.

Crimson thought he heard a faint metallic noise nearby, but he ignored it. He wished he had glasses to straighten so he could look intellectual. Instead he settled for sucking on his quill and levitating up a sheet of paper. The quill tasted awful.

"So, Pinkamena Diane Pie, what did you think of 'Muffins'?" he said, his voice cracking.

Pinkie Pie dug into another dumplings. "The texture would be wrong, and it's too soft. And can he really make good balloon animals? Because you have no business calling yourself the world's best party clown if all the balloon animals you can make are dogs and giraffes. How did Sprinkles ever get past the rank of private if he didn't know how to bake properly?"

Crimson replayed the conversation a few times, then ran it backwards to see if it made any more sense. "I mean, my story, 'Muffins'. The one that I sent to you. To read. I mean, the story, not the food."

Pinkie patted him on the horn. "I know, silly. You just remind me a little of somebody else with the same issues. When little things like that go wrong, it takes me out of the story, and instead of going 'oh no, it's coming right for her!' or 'oooh, that's really cool,' or even 'gross, she's naked!' I think 'wait, why muffins?"

Once again, Crimson Blot strained for comprehension. There was serious feedback somewhere on the far side of Planet Pinkie Pie, but a mounting dread kept him from seeing a clear way to it. "Why muffins?" he repeated.

"Yeah. The texture of meat in the more cakey baked goods would taste icky and really stick out, more than raisins or nuts or chocolate chips, and isn't a muffin basically just a bald cupcake?"

Celestia raised the sun inside Crimson Blot's head. "Oh, you're talking about the ingenious way Derpy Hooves disposes of the bodies in my story." He frowned. "What's wrong with muffins? I mean, she eats muffins, and it's just a story, right?" He kept his face neutral, his voice calm, but his little heart almost missed a beat.

"Well, even though I'd never contemplate doing something that horrible to another pony, or even a certain nasty griffon, if I was to chop up a pony into eeny-weeny –teeny pieces and then cook them up for dinner, I wouldn't put them into muffins. Either the meat would fall through or it would cook too fast or it would taste all wrong." She took another bite of pot pie. It had blue filling with flecks of different colors, not just the usual carrots, potatoes, and peas. "Just like I know Derpy Hooves would never go loco in the cocoa, but if the little things all stay right in the story, like how you do the baking or how much a cheese wire can cut through or how fast you'd fall if a Pegasus dropped you from a low-hanging cloud, then it's easier to make-believe the really crazy stuff is happening."

The colorful dumpling went sour in Crimson's mouth. He took a few deep breaths. "Um, yes?"

Pinkie Pie nodded. "If I ever did want to cook up an innocent pony for dinner, I'd probably try baking them into pies, or roasting them in dumplings, or even mixing them up in a big tasty stew." She smacked her lips. "Plus, it'd be a lot harder for somepony else to notice the difference! With muffins, or cakes, or bread loaves, the meaty texture would stand out, but stews and pot pies are supposed to have all kinds of different chewy bits in them."

"I'll…I'll remember that," Crimson said, putting down the dumpling. He felt as if he'd eaten baked bads. A trembling started in his hooves and worked up to his chattering teeth. "I'd b-better g-go now. I've g-got to walk the laundry and hang up the dog. Th-thanks for the advice!"

"Aww," Pinkie Pie pleaded, still speaking in her normal, high-speed, high-pitched, friendly voice. "Don't you wanna stay for dessert?"

She lifted the silver cover up. In the center of a bed of basmati rice, with an apple in her mouth and two cucumber slices over her eyes, lay Rainbow Dash's head.

Crimson Blot wasn't a Pegasus, but he managed to run a good distance away from Sugarcube Corner before his hooves appeared to touch the ground. His Doppler-distorted scream might have lagged a few feet after him. He'd felt an apple bounce his retreating back, but he hadn't heard Rainbow Dash laughing or seen her pull her head out of the hole in the table.


	6. Chapter 6

Crimson Blot huddled alone under his bed, the pillow pressed over his head. He tried not to do the thing his mother had spent lots of time training him not to do ever since he stopped wearing diapers.

Pinkamena Diane Pie couldn't possibly…

No. There was just no way. She was a bearer of the Elements of Harmony, a goddess in pony form, the avatar of laughter.

But didn't all laughter hold a hint of madness in it? Wasn't laughter the way ponies coped with the incomprehensible? But no, she couldn't turn against and devour the Element of Loyalty. It was unthinkable, and yet he thought of it.

The small part of him that was still lucid and sane said that this might make a decent story idea if he could figure out some way to reconcile this streak of homicide with Pinkie Pie's past behavior. He shook his head. This was something he couldn't make sense of. How could the bringer of love and joy turn into a can-apple-istic monster.

Something wrapped against his 2nd-door window. He pulled the covers closer and squeezed his Smarty Pants tight enough to strain her stitches. Nothing should be out there. Nothing _was_ out there. It was just a branch scraping against his window in the wind. Crimson ignored the fact that no trees grew near his side of the house and that there was no wind.

"Crimson? Crimson Blot?" The voice was muffled, like it was chewing something. He struggled to shut off his imagination without success.

The voice new his name. It sounded like Rainbow Dash, the Element of Loyalty, another living goddess. But was she still living?

"Come on, Crimson, let me in!"

Crimson froze. Vampires and faeries couldn't enter unless invited. He shivered under his bed. If Smarty Pants had been e a living creature instead of a stuffed toy, he would have been cutting off her circulation now.

"Crimson? Please? Look, I'm sorry."

Reverence won out over fear. Crimson crawled out of the bed, still wearing the blanket, Smarty Pants gripped in one hoof. He waddled awkwardly on just two legs, and with the other leg he grasped a heavy silver-lined clock.

"Y-yes? Crimson squealed.

The figure scraped against his window. It reminded him of that play he'd scene, the one about vampires attacking a small earth-pony town, "Salem's Plot". Outside his window a figure hovered, a pony he knew to be dead, a pony he'd unintentionally eaten part of. Maybe she was coming back. He tried to jam his hoof down his throat and empty his stomach again.

"Can I come in, please?" the unholy voice wailed.  
><em>I won't invite it in. I won't let it in. It will take back the stolen flesh. I won't invite it in,<em> Crimson Blot thought.

"C-c-c-come in!"  
><em>Oh horse-apples.<em>

The zombie-ghost slipped in through the window. It crawled across the ceiling with something gripped in its mouth. A hoof? A bone? A fresh pony's heart? The horror from beyond the veil dropped its burden on the floor.

"Look, I'm really sorry about-"

"ZOMBIE!" Crimson Blot screamed. His hair stood on end. Energy crackled from his hooves to his horns.

"I'm not a zombie," the apparition chuckled. "Zombies don't talk."  
>"GHOST!" Crimson shrieked. He fired off a Light Bolt spell at the nightmare. It ducked.<p>

"It's okay! Relax! I'm totally alive!" Rainbow Dash shouted. "I'm not going to eat you or suck out or blood or use your skull as a bowling ball. It was just a joke! A prank!"

Crimson Blot peeked out from under the bed. He noticed a definite absence of putrifying flesh, glowing red eyes, or dripping gore. Rainbow Dash definitely appeared whole, unarmed, and in no way resembled a lifeless abomination that should have stayed dead.

"You p-promise?" He said. It was a stupid question. He knew that as soon as the words tumbled out, but he had spent too much concentration on his bladder to exert much control over his mouth.

Rainbow Dash nudged over the item she'd been carrying in her mouth. It was a gift basket. Nestled amongst the cookies and puff-pastries was a cake with "Sorry For Scaring You" written on it in purple buttercream frosting, Nothing in the basket was blue or rainbow-colored.

Crimson Blot looked up again at the reasurringly alive-looking Rainbow Dash. Then the reality of what he'd just done sank in.

"Oh my Celestia I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm so sorry!" He squealed, prostrating himself before her. At least, he thought he was prostrating. "I could have really hurt you! I'm not worthy to-"  
>"Kid, relax," Rainbow Dash said, putting her hoof over his mouth to stall further protestations. "I walk away from nuclear rainbooms. I don't think you could hurt me if you tried, especially with that little light-show spell."<p>

"R-really? You're sure?" Crimson said. The bitter taste of guilt still clogged his throat.

"You've got nothing to apologize for. I'm really sorry that my joke got out of hand and made you feel threatened." She coughed and pawed the floor. "I mean, I thought you'd like it, after I read your story. Pinkie said it was too mean."

Rainbow Dash suddenly found Crimson a few inches from her face. "You read my story? Oh my gosh that is so awesome! It wasn't too long, was it? Was it gory enough? I tried to make it scary. What did you think?"

Rainbow Dash flapped her wings a bit and reared up a little. "Um, yeah. I liked it."  
>Crimson Blot's heart raced. "Really?"<p>

"Yeah," she said. "It was hilarious."

Cirmson's smile froze in place. He felt himself drawing away from it, leaving it in front like a shield against some kind of warped wish. He tried to remember if he'd released any sadistic genies recently. "You think it's funny?"

"Totally," Rainbow Dash said. "I mean, all that over-the-top blood and the stupid characters."

Crimson Blot's body remained standing. Inside, he curled up and shriveled away. "Oh." The word was as heavy and flat as a coffin lid.

"Wasn't that what you were going for?" Rainbow Dash said uneasily. She cocked a wing. "You weren't, were you."

Crimson Blot lowered his head and held in the tears. "I don't know. Maybe it's a satire?" The words sounded hollow even to his own ears.

"Well, I'm no writing expert, but you need to know what you're doing. I'd be crazy to fly up to at Mach 4 before deciding whether I was trying a hurricane shift or a sonic rainboom."

"Yes, element of Loyalty," Crimson said, his voice defeated but not quite self-pitying. "Anything else?"

Rainbow Dash ruffled his hair again. "You want another tip? Somepony will find something to laugh at, especially in a scary story, so give them something. If you put in a few light japes and hilarious moments, which you seem up to, it'll make the scary parts that much more intense."

Crimson lifted his head and managed a tiny smile.

"Now, if you'll excuse me, I gotta stir up some thunderstorms to clear out the wyverns. The adults aren't carnivorous, but this is breeding season."


End file.
